to his words; he wasn't drunk, Maico knew,buthappy,ashappyasM cowas humiliated, as happy as M co was angry. " G " hi h . d " G W d 0, s mot er Sat. o. e nee the money," and so M co swallowed, and stretched his sore, wounded body. He stared angrily at the blind man, and then, with his mother sighing softly, he went. M co knew the way by then. Knew it well. Knew the names of the streets they passed on their descent to the center, the turns they took, the intersections where the road was rutted and the bus shook. All the sights along the way, the deter- mined faces of the men and women who got off and on, and the collective breath the bus took as they crossed the bridge just before the old center. In the r ny sea- son, the thin, dirty stream beneath them would come to life-or a kind of life- but for now it was just an anemic trickle that would not make it to the sea. Boys his age ran along the riverbed; Maico could see them from the bus, tending to their oily fires. If he'd been asked, he could have described it all for the blind man, this city of dirt and smoke, but Maico supposed that the blind man knew this place better than he ever would. He didn't read the paper that day, didn't listen to the blind man's stories as the ave- nue filled and emptied according to its own sombre rhythms. He w ted for the blind man to apologize, though he knew that he wouldn't. He didn't bother to count the money before it disappeared into his pocket, and it was only when the skies began to clear, when the sun poured through a gap- ing hole in the clouds, that he realized that there had never been so much. Maico touched his face. His sore jaw, his bruised cheek, his right eye, not swollen shut but pinched so that he had to strain to keep it open. The blind man couldn't know. De- scribe yourself What do you look like? Beggar. He was surrounded by them, could see them now, this itinerant army of sup- plicants, waiting for a stroke of good luck, for some generous act to redeem the day or the week or the month. Counting, hour after hour, the careful arithmetic of survival: this much for food, this much if I walk home, this much for the children, for the house, for the soup, for the drink, for the roof over my head, this much to keep the cold at bay. M co' s father spent his waking hours in another part of the city, engaged in much the same calculus, and if he had succeeded at anything it was in shielding the boy from this. 'Were doing well today, no?" the blind man s d. He didn't w t for an answer, just smiled dumbly and hummed a tune. Then the light changed, and the boy gathered himself and led the blind man ag n through the idling rows of traffic. The r was sweet with exhaust. A man driving alone dropped money into the tin. M co stopped short. He turned to the blind man, faced him. 'What are you doing?" the blind man asked. It wasn't a question that M co could have answered, even if he'd tried. There was no question of trying. M co reached into his pocket, pulled out the money they'd earned that morning, the money they'd been given, and dropped a handful into the blind man's tin, where it rattled wonderfully, heavily, falling with such abrupt weight that the blind man nearly let go. He s d, ''What's wrong with you, boy?" But M co was not listening, could hear nothing but the sound of the rewing motors, and he watched in the glare for the light to change; another handful of coins, little ten-cent pieces, the bigger sil- ver coins that really meant something- all of it M co dropped into the tin. He read the confusion on the blind man's face. The money was all gone now; he had none of it, and he began to step back and away from the blind man. 'Where are you going? Where are you?" the blind man s d, not pleading but not unconcerned. M co steeled himself: and with a swift slap he upended the blind man's tin, knocking it and the coins from the beg- gar's hands and into the street. Some rolled under the idling cars, others nestled into the cracks in the pavement, and a few caught a glint of sun and shone and shone. But only for the boy. A moment later, the light had changed, and the traffic had resumed its northward progress. But even if it had not, even if every car in the city had w ted patiently for the blind man to drop to his knees and pick up each of the coins, M co would have seen something that made it all worthwhile. It was what the boy would remember, what he would replay in his mind as he walked away, across the bridge, and up the long hill toward home. The blind man, suddenly helpless-for a mo- ment, he was not pretending. . ADVERTISEMENT on the town BE THE FIRST TO HEAR ABOUT EVENTS, PROMOTIONS, AND SPECIAL OFFERS FROM NEW YORKER ADVERTISERS. 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